


We Still Thought We Lost

by grnidshrk



Series: Shades in the Grey: Asphyxiation [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grnidshrk/pseuds/grnidshrk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle with the Chitari, families are notified and they begin to grieve, the Avengers chief among them. </p><p>Everyone--even Phil Coulson, maybe especially him--has secrets. SHIELD is good a ferreting them out, but there are some things that the organization just doesn't know to look for.</p><p>That's probably why they don't notice Phil is alive for a few days until the coroner goes to do the standard SHIELD autopsy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stuttered Breath

So, when he feels the bladed end of Loki's staff leave his chest he can feel the pull of blood as it fills his lungs and the wet stuttering sound it makes when he inhales. Liquid being there isn't new, but the pain in that area of his body is. 

He had laughed when he was told he was so unassuming and the least threatening of all the agents SHEILD could have sent. He knows, however, that appearances are deceiving.

His eye sight is growing grey at the edges and he knows he's headed towards unconsciousness but even as his heart slows to where it's barely detectable, he'll awaken when his energy isn't being spent healing. Explaining these phenomena to Fury isn't going to be fun and the man is going to become even more paranoid, but he is a child of Death and death doesn't come so easily for them.


	2. Kokoe-Pa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil was never connected to their deaths, but he always knew he was the cause.

Frogs are benign, considered ugly and slimy, undesirable. In several mythos, though, they are said to have hidden talents or wisdom and end up teaching lessons; they're something dismissed as unimportant until you least expect it.

He'd found the accurate comparison between him and the amphibian eerie as a teen and accepting and proud of it as he got older.

Even as a soldier, an Army Ranger before he was an agent with SHEILD, he was always overlooked and seen as nothing special. He found a rather vicious joy in proving all of the presumptuous dicks wrong when it hurt them most, even if his face didn't show it.

He'd always been rather solitary, a background character, but for a long time he did it out of necessity more than the desire; he understood and sympathized with Rogue of the X-Men and they talked quite a bit through e-mail despite the rivalry and grudging cooperation between their two groups.

At twelve he'd gone swimming with some neighbor kids and one of the older boys had held on to him at one point, wrapped his arms around him and pulled him to his chest as the others had stolen his shorts. He didn't know what was happening as the boy dropped minutes later, his body twitching as it tried to get paralyzed muscles to work, and died in front of them before anyone could get help.

At fourteen a girl he'd liked had kissed him and he'd kissed her back but shortly after she began having trouble breathing--she died at the hospital thirty minutes later.

After those two incidents and a couple others he stopped letting people touch any parts of him that weren't clothed.

At sixteen he met a girl with copper-black eyes and rough grey and red scales shifting over her skin and sharp points poking through her hair at the back of her head as she broke into the neighboring house and came out with a knapsack full of stolen food. Running into someone with the same abilities as him was different but it allowed them both to learn more about themselves. He was living in foster care, never knowing anything else, and her father had died when she was young, protecting her and some other souls from a rogue Shade, a Demon, leaving her on the streets. Neither of them knew much about what they could fully do except for what came naturally.

It was the first time either of them learned what species their other selves were--that was when he learned why people died if they touched him long enough.

It wasn't until he was seventeen that he learned to pull back the poison that lived in his skin, everything else he'd known to pull back, known no one else'd looked like that, could move like that, but his skin still sweated poison instead of water and salt and he'd never noticed.

Part of him felt guilty for the people dead at his hands, but another more rational part told him he was just like the mutants Xavier took in, with gifts he couldn't and didn't know how to control then. 

Close to twenty years later and he could control it almost without thought.

He still didn't let anyone touch his skin without his knowledge or permission.

Meeting Clint and Natasha, being closer to them than he had anyone else besides the woman who'd become his sister at sixteen, changed that. He trusted them to read his body language and know when it was okay.

Stark didn't get close to him if he didn't have to; threat of a taser and drooling while watching supper nanny secured that.

Thor tried to crush all of their bones when he hugged them; Phil honestly didn't know if the poison that was naturally part of him would even affect the God of Thunder.

He hadn't known Captain Rogers long enough before he was stabbed to see how he'd treat him after Phil got his hero worship under control.


	3. Roc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint had never been comfortable on the ground; it wasn't right, he was too heavy, too big. 
> 
> Natasha said that was the entire reason why he appeared to have that death wish the shrinks always said he had, after all, who really wants to spend as much time as possible in the air _without_ equipment to keep him there.

Clint Barton had always had excellent eyesight and could see far beyond the normal human. Occasionally, he felt the odd cold spot here or there, he'd hear warnings when no one was around, he'd see a grey specter from the corner of his eye; he felt out of place and caught between two different things, though what he had no idea. When he had to, when money was hard to come by or regular, plain old normal human food seemed disgusting, he'd eat what appealed most--be they bugs or rotten fruits and meats--and despite everything he never got sick off of them. He made sure no one ever saw him eat those types of things; he wasn't sure how to explain it.

His older brother Barney felt the cold too, but not much else; never did he feel like there was a part of him aching to get out, he never said anything about feeling like all he had to do was jump off something just the right height and then he'd be truly free and not tied to the ground. Never did he have an appetite for the gross or strange.

Clint had always felt like being on the ground was just wrong, his bones were too heavy and he couldn't get enough air in his lungs, like they wouldn't expand enough and the air sometimes seemed too thick to breathe easy.

Learning to be a master archer, acrobat, fencer, knife thrower, and so many other skills while he was under first, Duquesne's and then Chrisholm's tutelage helped. It let him climb to heights he was more comfortable with, despite the lack of safety nets or harnesses and the worry other members of the circus had claimed for him as he kept finding places higher and higher to 'nest'. Having a stage name of Hawkeye seemed damn near perfect, having it follow him into first mercenary work and then using it as his call-sign in SHEILD was comforting. 

The jabs about him nesting in high places never disappeared, they just turned into whispered rumors he learned about as he skulked around in the vents of SHEILD HQ; he was a wildcard, a rogue agent they didn't know what to do with, but kept anyway because they knew he'd get out if they tried to contain him. Then they partnered him Natasha, the Black Widow, and they said he became more manageable; truth was he'd just stopped stalking the agents and being where he wasn't supposed more often because he had someone who kind of understood.

Then their jobs were being handled by Fury himself because they drove their first three handlers nuts trying to keep track of them.

Then Fury gave them to Coulson.

Phillip Coulson didn't look like much and both he and Widow figured he'd wash out in two weeks, if not days, he was so unimpressive.

But then he surprised them. He always knew where they were. He always knew their plans. The man was never surprised, no matter if they'd taken the greatest care to hide. His tone never changed; an easy going flat tone that rarely sounded like anything beyond bland amusement. It was four months before the really saw him in action.

Their mission was compromised. Widow was cornered and Hawkeye couldn't reach her; Coulson did.

His movements were smooth and he moved no more than he had too, there was a gun at his hip but a knife flashed just as deadly in his hand as the Widow's, as Hawkeye's. They took all of the enemies down and they got out of there almost completely fine despite the hiccup.

They never doubted Phillip Coulson's ability as their handler again.

Clint never did find the right time to ask why he always felt that bone deep chill around Coulson, despite their line of work, he'd disillusioned himself into thinking he had all the time in the world.

After waking from Loki's control and hearing about all of the death his body had helped create, about _Phil's_ death, there was an empty hollow where that comforting chill had once taken up space.

Now it was a barren hunk of ice he didn't think would melt any time soon.


	4. The Harpy Eagle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was his life. Really.
> 
> Sometimes Nick Fury wondered what he'd done before in previous lifetimes for the the saying 'May you Live in interesting times' to describe his life perfectly.

Nicholas Fury sighed and rubbed at the scarred empty socket that once held his eye, trying to ward away the headache throbbing at his temples, threatening to become a migraine.

The battle had been successful—Loki defeated, the Chitari beaten back, and their numbers decimated—but there were hundreds dead or unaccounted for and damages that needed to be assessed so that repairs could begin.

That was all beyond the part where one of his best agents, one of the few people he could have possibly called a _friend_ , had been killed. During battle he was rock steady, understood that casualties happened and he couldn't do anything about what he wasn't there for. After the battle—after the action and all that was left was dealing with paper work and determining what to do with the wannabe megalomaniac that tried to enslave the human race—he let the knowledge penetrate and he couldn't quite quell the desire to go and shoot Loki several times for killing Phillip Coulson, so instead he downed a tumbler full of aged scotch and stared at the wall of his office and let his thoughts fall into buzzing white noise.

It was one of the few times Nick Fury let his shoulders slump and a heartfelt sigh hiss out in weary grief.

Four days after the battle and he had finally managed to make time to debrief the members of the Avengers Initiative. They were all sitting there, quiet and sombre, recognizing that someone was missing. Neither Agent Barton or Stark attempted to make inappropriate quips as they normally would, one filled with guilt and the other respecting the man who'd once rode herd on him when he was dying. 

Maria Hill sat next to him, just as quiet as the others, taking rigorous notes of what each person said, doing the job of a man they all missed—even of only peripherally. 

Having only one eye made glaring much easier, the absence of the other lending him a dark and menacing aura. So much so that when he turned it on the young woman in nurses' scrubs that entered the conference room she almost visibly quaked.

The nurse tried to keep her breathing steady as she struggled to find the words to tell them of their discovery, of the coroner beginning to prep the body only for blood to well from the beginnings of the standard 'Y' incision as if it were still alive. The startling revelation that Phillip Coulson had an extremely slow, but steady pulse shocked them all. Their equipment had barely picked it up, and it wouldn't have if they hadn't turned the sensitivity up to its highest.

Telling the Director, telling the heroes in front of her, that their fallen member was in fact alive and healing well despite the seriousness of the injury that felled him was daunting. So many thing could still go wrong, so many almost did and she shivered slightly and felt sick rise up her throat at the thought of the coroner not noticing the way Agent Coulson's blood still flowed and continuing what would have then been a vivisection, she was scared about the effect it would have on the people gathered here to regain their teammate only to lose him in the end.

After stuttering for several minutes and the Director's glare getting worse she finally just swallowed down everything she was feeling and spit it out.

The silence that followed was deafening. 

And the cacophony of noise after that could be felt in one's bones.

The nurse fled as soon as she could.

Nicholas Fury was not often surprised by the things that happened in life. He was a spy; he'd seen and done things that few could ever claim but learning that someone you trusted to get the job done, who was supposed dead, had been alive while being kept with the casualties was still shocking.

He'd have to commend Coulson when he awoke for somehow managing to trick them all; after he yelled at him for 'dying' in the first place, of course.


	5. Copper and Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil Coulson's is deceptively slim, when printed on paper.
> 
> As it is digitally, the only other things you can find are vague references to missions that never happened. 
> 
> That's why Nick Fury is the only one who knows who the woman sleeping leaning against his agent's bed is.

Nick Fury had made the one phone call every leader in a combat oriented organization fears but knows they will eventually have to do; having to call her to give her the good news is even more daunting. The frost in Detective Penelope Coulson's voice when he calls her after the visit from the nurse reminds him of how they had found Captain Rogers and he forces back a shiver as he tells her Phil is alive. The woman was just as formidable as her 'brother,' she had the same ability to either stare or take you down, despite the seemingly genial exterior.

He'll never admit to either of them the effect they have on him when they are well and truly angered.

In all of the files that SHIELD has on Coulson, there is no mention of her or the odd relationship the two have. The only one that really knows about her is Fury—a phone number written on a post-it, a request that if he dies she's notified, and a vague description about how they met and their relationship from a night spent drinking together after dealing with Stark. Fury is the only one that knows about her role in Phil's life.

They share a last name and that’s the only thing that really ties them together, that shows that they treat each other as siblings. On the surface, they're legal siblings, adopted by a man who never existed anywhere but legally, and most government agencies and any regular-joe looking through the records wouldn't know otherwise. Phil met a hacker; another person just like them, while he was in the Special Forces in the Army that made the 'adoption' official everywhere _but_ SHIELD. They had a paper trail showing their adoption, school records that put them together until they graduated high school legal documents naming each other their medical proxy while Phil was in the Army, everything.

Of course, SHIELD digs deeper and finds more information about their recruits than any other organization out there—that's why she's not included as Phil's family in the dossier SHIELD has collected about him, she's not really his sister just another orphan he's stuck with since their teens, a footnote at the bottom as one of his known associates.

She's asleep, her head pillowed in her arms against Phil's bed when they come in, dark circles under her eyes. The only reason Fury recognizes her is because he checked her out after Coulson gave him the number and who she was; as she is, she looks nothing like her service picture for the NYPD and he knows part of it is the work she's been doing since the Chitari tried to invade and the other is hearing the man she considers her brother dead.

He's not really surprised she beat them there.

The Avengers and Miss Potts are all there, crowding the door way to the private room Coulson was placed in behind him, waiting for their turn to verify the validity of life in the man they'd all fought for. Nick takes in the machines attached to one of his best agents and lets a out sigh, even in front of the others, and grips the hospital gown covered shoulder tightly, feeling the warmth beneath his fingers as a sign that what they were told was true. Moving out of the way, Miss Potts is the first to stride to his side, tears gathered at the corner of her eyes as she reaches out to smooth his hair back.

Her hand is just centimeters away from his head when her wrist is caught in a tight grip and a gasp escapes her throat.

Instead of the blue-green eyes he knows the detective has similar to his agent, her eyes have slitted pupils surrounded by dark copper which is then surround by black. She's silent as she sits up fully, her eyes causing everyone that sees them to shift into a battle ready stance; he himself had moved his hand to the gun that was always kept on his person. Some of the tension dissipates when she lets go of Miss Potts' arm, but only some and she sighs before running her hand through the bangs escaping the bun the rest of her hair is in and closing her eyes.

When she opens them again they're the color Fury knows they're supposed to be, at least according to her records.

When she stands and moves so that her back is to the wall and her hands visible, no one so much as twitches and she sighs again before looking directly at him and gesturing towards the door. It doesn't take him even a second to understand before everyone is in the room and the door closed suspicion in everyone's gaze.

When she looks at Coulson there's an odd twist to her lips before she looks right at him and says that if they touch his bare skin, they'll more than likely die and that's happened enough in Phil's life. There's a toxin that seeps from his skin instead of the oils and sweat like a regular person, she says, he can usually pull it back, even in his sleep now, but that hasn't always been the case. And right now, he and his body are doing so many other important things to keep him alive that pulling back the poison isn't something that's a priority. The poison is incredibly potent; all it takes is a little bit of skin on skin contact to cause severe neurological distress and eventual cardiac arrest. She doesn't explain more than that and everyone is still wary of her.

She doesn't stop Stark from using some of the materials available in the room to swab his skin and with an order from Fury it quickly taken and tested to see if she's telling the truth. When it comes back ten minutes later that his skin is practically seeping with what's called batrachotoxins and a report of how toxic it is they all stop treating her like she's trying to kill the man they're all there for.

She doesn't answer any more of their questions, however.


	6. Dark Blue skin, Red Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's grateful it's night when he wakes, his eyes are currently built for a darker environment than a hospital usually provides its patients.

When Phil opens his eyes, he doesn't know how many days have passed since Loki stabbed him, but the room is dark through the window so he knows its night at least. What he does know is that they must have won, because Penny wouldn't be sleeping in a chair next to his bed otherwise—his sister was too stubborn to let him being hurt hamper her if someone was trying to make her bow down to them. He's grateful that the lights are out because not only are they letting Pen sleep, and those bags beneath her eyes give testimony to a very stressful week at the least, but he's still exhausted and pulling back the otherness that makes him, _him,_ is too hard and he knows his eyes are completely black at the moment and a bright light would only give him a headache on top of the various aches he already has.

He braces himself for pain and pulls in as deep a breath as he can—it doesn't hurt nearly as bad as he thought it would.

If he were a normal person he knows he wouldn't be able to do that for at least a month, maybe more, as it is he feels the pull of new skin stretching more than it's ready too and resigns himself to slowly building his ability to breathe deeply back up. Pen isn't sleeping on top of him as a lizard, like she's done before when he's been injured trying to affirm to herself that he's still alive, so it gives him the chance to move around a bit. He finds a SI tablet on a nearby tray and hacks his way passed the security. It's definitely his sister's because all it takes for him to get in is attempting her regular password on a hunch, he figures she must have met Stark while he was out and the ensuing torture that's going to commence is going to be horrid if he's liked her enough to give her tech.

Finding that it's been a week and a half since Loki and what he assumes was an arduous battle makes him bite back a groan at the thought of all the paperwork he's going to have to catch up on and the explanation he knows Fury is going to want. He also wants to make sure no one died from touching him while he was out, especially not someone like Pepper.

With a sigh he put the tablet to sleep and of to the side and settles himself down more comfortably, knowing that once the morning comes it's going to be a busy day.

When he wakes it is slowly and he has a wonderful profile image of Clint, eyes a dark red as he stares out into the distance, before he tries to shift and can't help the soft groan that escapes when his ribs move against his still tender skin causing the other man to blink and his eyes return to their more _human_ color of blue when he focuses on Phil waking up.

"Holy shit, you're awake!" Clint said in what could almost qualify as a yelp, waking Penny at the same time. Her eyes are once again copper and black but Clint isn't paying any attention to her, "You fucker, you knew something like that was going to happen, you couldn't not. You got both _Cap_ and _Stark_ to get along, yeah, but that doesn't forgive the kamikaze attack on Loki, you know. You scared everyone, you got _Fury_ to sigh, I mean, _Fury_ , the man has like no emotions and you got him to sigh, that, if nothing else, should tell you that it was way over the top, Coulson, way, _way, **way**_ , over the top. Seriously, don't do that again."

Phil seriously tries not to chuckle at the words that fall out of Clint's mouth but he can't help the corner of one side of his mouth twitching upwards in amusement. Penny groans at his side and he can't help but glance at her and his eyes widen slightly seeing copper staring at him instead of blue-green, her head resting blearily in one hand. "Hey, yeah, do you know why her eyes are doing that? She won't explain it to us and quite frankly its kind of disturbing to see her eyes be all slitted pupil and orange when she wakes up, just for them to be green after she blinks." 

Phil turns to look back at Clint and blinks, "Us." His voice is still kind of crackly from having first a spear and then blood fill his lungs but neither of the other two so much as blink or twitch at the audio proof that his lungs has been in less than good shape.

The sniper nods, straddling his seat and resting his hands in between his legs, "Yeah, the, uh, medics really thought you were dead and no one realized you were alive until the SHIELD coroner went to do the standard autopsy and realized you were still bleeding like a living person. We all got notified you were alive in the middle of the debriefing of the battle, a few days after it because there was too much to do before any of us had the time. Anyways, Fury must of called her before we got the chance to come see for ourselves you were alive because she was sitting there leaning against your bed asleep. Miss Potts, Pepper, went to smooth your hair back and Crazy Eyes' hand snapped up and stopped her before she got the chance, despite being dead asleep." Phil glanced at Penny and she shrugged, a bashful smile trying to stretch at her mouth. "We kinda tensed up seeing as her eyes weren't, ya know, human, as then she blinked and they were green. She stood and backed up against the wall all nonthreatening and explained about your skin being poisonous, and man way to not tell us something me and Nat would have needed to know if you ever got seriously hurt on an op, Coulson, really. She wouldn't tell us anything else about it though, been really mum, she hasn't even fallen into any of the word traps Banner and Stark have tried to trick her into, which is where she got the tablet, apparently Stark likes people who don't immediately divulge all of their secrets to him with judicious application of his charm or offers of money."

Phil quirked an eyebrow at his sister and she just shrugged, "S'not my secret to tell, at least not just mine, and I know how bad you would have felt if someone had died and I didn't tell anyone what to avoid."

Phil just sighed and shook his head, tired already, despite only being up for—he checked the clock—fifteen minutes.

"I suppose that means we're going to have a big family meeting then? You know how much Stark hates having JARVIS hack his way into finding out all of our secrets when it's easier to just tell him. And Fury hates Stark hacking his systems because that's when the trouble starts." Phil drawled somewhat sarcastically, his voice smoothing out the more he used it. He wasn't sure which it really was, Stark getting irritated that they didn't give him there secrets or Stark just irritating Fury because it amused him. Or it could be both; it would fit with Stark's personality to irritate those that irritate him for his amusement and petty revenge.

Clint nodded, "Yeah, that'd probably be for the best. That means you're going to explain Crazy Eyes over there too, yes?"

Phil flashed his teeth in an evil grin at his sister as she sighed, irritation marring her features, "I've told you several times Agent Barton, my name is Penelope, call me either Pen, Penny, or Detective Coulson if you wish, but please, my name is not 'Crazy Eyes'."

Clint just grinned at her and shrugged, "Now why would I do that? It'd be too easy if I cut you some slack and not Coulson himself, and he's the one with a hole in his lungs."

Phil just sighed and relaxed back into his hospital bed, listening to the back and forth between his sister and the man he knows he's going to have to explain things to later on, both emotional and . . . Those about their shared heritage. Even so, he was glad to be awake again, the chaos surrounding him and the Avengers, be damned.


End file.
